Who is Your Savior?
Lamentations 5:1-22
Lamentations 5:1-22
“Remember, O Lord, what has happened to us.”
We have before us today a powerful text, the concluding prayer of the book of Lamentations. Written around the fall of the kingdom of Israel to the Babylonians in 586 BC, Lamentations is both a chronicle of Israelite sorrow and anguish at the fall of their kingdom and a theological treatise to keep the Jewish identity alive during captivity. The fifth and concluding chapter of Lamentations is a prayer acknowledging the captor’s sin, summarizing their punishment and petitioning God to restore and renew His people.
The petition of God to restore His people is common in the Old Testament. Time and again, the Israelites would sin and bring punishment upon themselves. In the dark days of desperation that followed, God’s children would return to their senses, repent from their sins, render sacrifices and reason (plead) with God for forgiveness and restoration. O Lord God, please remember us!
The Hebrew word translated as “remember,” is Zacar. It carries with it the sense of remembering and then doing something about it. To remember something or someone is to act upon it; a mental exercise coupled with physical action. In Exodus 2:23-24, we read that God hears the cry of the Hebrew people and “remembers” the covenant He had made with Abraham 400 plus years earlier. In remembering His people, God acts through Moses, Aaron, Miriam, Caleb, Joshua and others to bring the Hebrews out of bondage and into the promised land. O Lord God, please remember us! When the Israelites cry out to God for deliverance from bondage, they reenact the Exodus story.
Invariably, the Israelites would forget God’s deliverance and return to their sinful ways, worshiping foreign idols and forgetting YHWH, the one true God; thus the sin-salvation cycle would start over once again. How many times in our own lives have we done the same? When life is good, when all is well, how many of us forget God and His promises to us? As our bank account increases, our relationships flourish, as we receive promotions at work, as our favorite sports team wins the Super Bowl or the World Series, how many of us put God on the back burner of our lives? Slowly, perhaps imperceptibly, we begin to worship money in our bank account, spend all our time daydreaming about our sexy new girl or boyfriend, become consumed in our work and obsessed with the day-to-day trappings and temptations of our lives. We have broken the second commandment–we idolize the gifts instead of worshiping the Giver. Ironic then, isn’t it, that when our lives go to hell, when an unexpected car repair wipes out our savings, when our boy or girlfriend ditches us for our best friend, when our job sends us to places such as Ramadi, Iraq, that only then do we turn to God and ask him to remember us? Who’s really forgotten who? Which party has broken the covenant? God or Us? When we cry out to God to deliver us from bondage, often brought upon ourselves by our own actions, aren’t we really asking God to let us off the hook for our own sin?
Maybe its not fair for God to hold us accountable. Like me, maybe you don’t like this idea that our sins have consequences. After all, we’re only human, God should expect us to make a few mistakes! So, I ask you this question: who does your savior look like? If you were to design your own personal god or goddess what would he or she look like? What kind of powers would they have? I think my own personal god would carry out revenge on my enemies while showering riches and blessings upon me and my friends. My god would tap into my self-righteous attitude and condemn all those whom I hold in contempt. That’s my god. What kind of savior are you looking for? What kind of savior do you think the Israelites were looking for?
Well, if we fast forward 600 years from the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians, we find the Israelites once again under foreign rule still looking for a savior. The Babylonians have given away to the Persians, the Persians to the Greeks, and the Greeks to the Romans. Once again, the Jewish people are calling upon God to deliver them. They are discontent under the Roman thumb, the air is ripe with intrigue and calls for revolution.
Into this scene steps an ambiguous figure–Jesus. He’s appreciated for his healings, admired for his miracles, abhorred for his teachings. His claims to be the Christ, the Messiah, the Savior met with resistance from those who could not envision a simple carpenter, followed by a ragtag band of fishermen, tax collectors and the like as a powerful leader, a political force, a prophetic deliverer. You see, while the Jewish people embraced Jesus as a miracle worker and healer, they wanted so much more. It was with great anticipation that they lined the streets leading up into Jerusalem, waving palm branches as he passed them by riding the little donkey. Their reaction to his presence was fit for a king. In their eyes, Jesus should have been riding in a golden chariot, pulled by a far nobler steed than a simple donkey. Great legions of soldiers, strong and true, should have followed, passing in review in precise columns, a great of wave of military strength–tangible, real and fearsome. Yes, the savior the Jews hoped for was to be the one who marched into Jerusalem to confront and overthrow the Roman authorities, to restore the nation of Israel to a preeminent place of power in the Mediterranean and Middle East.
Less than a week later, Jesus was dead. He had been abandoned by the very same people who had worshiped him. What had happened? How could the people have soured so quickly to the idea of Jesus as the Messiah? The answer is both simple and profound.
The Jews wanted political, earthly liberation, he gave them freedom from sin. He was no comic book hero, swooping down from the sky to save the day, he was a broken man who hung on a cross to save eternity. Jesus, who knew fully the temptation of sin, died to deliver us from the one enemy that we ourselves cannot overcome, that sinful nature that resides in all of us and brings to us death and eternal separation from God and all that is good. God had remembered his people! I don’t know about you, but that’s a pretty good God to me! You see, God understood that his people would constantly slip into the sin-salvation cycle, so He sent his only Son, Jesus–who was the Christ–to save us once-and-for-all; a final covenant that neither Satan, nor sin nor ourselves can ever break. Because of Jesus Christ, nothing separates us from the powerful love and grace of God! We have been liberated; able to cast off our old selves, able to clothe ourselves in God’s righteousness! Yes, we may stumble and fall, life may still stink at times, wars will still happen, Seabees will deploy to the sandbox–but God’s love will remain, our eternity with Him is secure. Now that’s a real God, the God I worship–the one who has remembered me and given to me the gift of eternal life with Him.
The Lamentations prayer concludes with one final petition–that God would restore the kingdom of Israel as in days of old. Yes, even then, some 2500 years ago, people were talking about the “good ol’ days.” We who are Christians though, who are members of the new covenant, we who have the awesome opportunity and privilege to do God’s work, we know that the “good ol’ days” are yet to come. With Jesus as our Savior we have eternity squarely in our sites–a bright future is dawning.
Lamentations 5 (NIV)
1 Remember, O LORD, what has happened to us;
look, and see our disgrace.
2 Our inheritance has been turned over to aliens,
our homes to foreigners.
3 We have become orphans and fatherless,
our mothers like widows.
4 We must buy the water we drink;
our wood can be had only at a price.
5 Those who pursue us are at our heels;
we are weary and find no rest.
6 We submitted to Egypt and Assyria
to get enough bread.
7 Our fathers sinned and are no more,
and we bear their punishment.
8 Slaves rule over us,
and there is none to free us from their hands.
9 We get our bread at the risk of our lives
because of the sword in the desert.
10 Our skin is hot as an oven,
feverish from hunger.
11 Women have been ravished in Zion,
and virgins in the towns of Judah.
12 Princes have been hung up by their hands;
elders are shown no respect.
13 Young men toil at the millstones;
boys stagger under loads of wood.
14 The elders are gone from the city gate;
the young men have stopped their music.
15 Joy is gone from our hearts;
our dancing has turned to mourning.
16 The crown has fallen from our head.
Woe to us, for we have sinned!
17 Because of this our hearts are faint,
because of these things our eyes grow dim
18 for Mount Zion, which lies desolate,
with jackals prowling over it.
19 You, O LORD, reign forever;
your throne endures from generation to generation.
20 Why do you always forget us?
Why do you forsake us so long?
21 Restore us to yourself, O LORD, that we may return;
renew our days as of old
22 unless you have utterly rejected us
and are angry with us beyond measure.
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